1. Field of the Invention
This invention is directed to a sub-miniature optical fiber cable, and to apparatuses and methods for making the sub-miniature optical fiber cable.
2. Description of the Related Art
Local exchange carriers are increasingly using optical fiber signal transmission in central offices to accommodate the increasing demand for optical fiber systems such as fiber-to-the-home, fiber-to-the-curb, hybrid fiber-coax, digital loop carrier and interoffice carrier systems. The central offices are used to distribute optical fiber cables and to establish cross-connections between optical fiber systems and/or exchanges. At present, optical fiber cable is produced in standard sizes of 2.4 mm or 3 mm in diameter. Although these standard sizes may appear to be relatively small in diameter, because they are used in such large numbers in a central office, these standard sizes lead to significant congestion, complication and expense in a central office. In fact, to accommodate cross-connections between optical fiber systems or exchanges, central offices require a relatively large number of cabinets with troughs housing optical fiber jumper cables, and racks housing connectors to join optical fiber jumper cables together. The relatively large number of cabinets currently required in a central office to accommodate cross-connections for optical fibers, increases the size and space requirements for central offices and thus the expense of the central offices. Moreover, the relatively large standard sizes of optical fiber cables lead to congestion and complication in the central office which requires significant time, and therefore expense, for service persons to establish, replace, change or maintain cross-connections in the central offices. Further, the size of the optical fiber cable has a multiplicative effect on the size of the components that are used with the cable in the central office. Thus, if the optical fiber cable is relatively large, so must be the connectors which terminate and attach the optical fiber cable to other optical fiber cables, the size of the racks that house the connector receptacles, the troughs which house the optical fiber jumper cables, and the size of the cabinets used to house the racks and troughs. If the size of the optical fiber cables can be reduced, the connectors, racks, troughs and cabinets can be proportionally decreased in size. Also noteworthy is that the cost of the optical fiber cables, connectors and cabinets is proportional to the amount of materials used in the manufacture thereof. Therefore, by decreasing the size of the optical fiber cables, connectors and cables, significant cost-savings can be obtained. Thus, there is a need to reduce the size of optical fiber cables.